Engendering Dialogue: this conference is the last of three events being organised as part of a Royal Society of Edinburgh funded Network in the Arts and Humanities hosted by the Philosophy Programme at the University of Dundee. The Network’s aim is to engender dialogue between feminist philosophers and other key areas of contemporary philosophical debate. The first event focussed on feminist philosophy and philosophy of cognitive science, and the second on art, gender, and the futures of feminism.

Morwenna Griffiths (Chair of Classroom Learning, Moray House School of Education, Edinburgh University)

Graeme Nixon (Programme Director, Studies in Mindfulness, School of Education, University of Aberdeen)

Amy Shuffelton (Department of Educational Foundations, University of Wisconsin-Whitewater)

With sessions on:

Philosophy for Children (led by Kath Jones, ‘Blooming Minds’ & University of Greenwich)

Philosophy in Prisons (led by Aislinn O’Donnell, Philosophy of Education at Mary Immaculate College, University of Limerick)

Feminist Philosophy and Education (led by Rachel Jones, University of Dundee and Aislinn O’Donnell).

CALL FOR PARTICIPANTS

This event will stage a series of encounters between contemporary feminist philosophers, philosophers of education, and those involved in teaching philosophy and in teaching teachers.

We are particularly interested in thinking about relationality, a concept which has been central to much recent feminist thought. This is reflected in notions of a relational self and relational autonomy, as well as in debates around intersubjectivity, embodiment and power relations. How might feminist attempts to shift the focus from the modern ideal of self-contained autonomy to the relations that constitute and sustain embodied individuals translate into a specifically pedagogical context? How might a feminist attentiveness to intersubjectivity, embodied relations, and dependency inform pedagogical practice in the classroom?

Equally, we are interested in how a focus on pedagogical relations might put pressure upon or otherwise transform feminist thinking around relationality. How do processes of learning, transformation and growth inflect our understanding of the role of relations in shaping individuals, as well as our models of responsibility, ethical encounter, and autonomy? How might a ‘mindful pedagogy’ and an attentiveness to the complexities of student/teacher relationships inform feminist thinking about selves and their relations to others?

To further this encounter, the workshop will feature sessions exploring pedagogical relations across a variety of contexts, including the teaching of teachers, teaching philosophy to children, student-teacher friendships, and teaching philosophy in prisons.

We are seeking proposals for further contributions to this event. These could take the form of 20 minute talks or papers, or the introduction of material for group discussion.

Possible topics include but are not restricted to the following:

reflections on relational pedagogy and/or the ethics of the pedagogical encounter, across a range of educational contexts/environments

Bursaries: a limited number of travel/accommodation bursaries are available to enable teachers, postgraduates or early career practitioners/researchers to participate in this event. Please indicate when submitting your abstract if you wish to be considered for a bursary, indicating your academic status (e.g. PhD student, early career practitioner).

Many of you will have heard that The Women’s Library in London is facing
closure and transfer of its collections, or being reduced to operating a
skeleton service. London Metropolitan University have decided to attempt to
find a new home, owner or sponsor for its holdings, and will reduce the
service to one day per week if such a sponsor cannot be found by the end of
2012.

At the time of writing, nearly 5,000 people have signed a petition – set up
by a concerned member of staff at the University – to save The Women’s
Library in its present form (thanks go to everyone who have already
signed). Its current home, opened in 2002, is purpose-built on the site of
an old wash-house in East London, and received a RIBA-award for its design.
It was opened due to the huge efforts and commitment of the Library’s
Friends and supporters both inside and outside the University, and a £4m
grant from the Heritage Lottery Fund. As well as housing the collections
and operating a Reading Room service, the building is a cultural centre
hosting exhibitions, talks, education projects and community events.

The Library was originally founded in 1926. The collections, now officially
Designated as ‘collections of outstanding national and international
importance’, were saved from dispersal by London Met’s forerunner City
of London Polytechnic 35 years ago, and this February it should have been
celebrating ten years in its new home. In the lead-up to a major suffrage
anniversary in 2018, now is the time to be building on the Library’s
successes, fundraising for, and celebrating this important asset – not
shutting it down or restricting public access.

London Met UNISON have initiated a campaign to save the Library, and are
seeking testimony from its users about the Library’s importance. You can
find out more on their blog, follow the campaign on Twitter, and add your
name to the petition on the Care 2 website. There is also a ‘Save The
Women’s Library’ group on Facebook.

The campaign has so far received coverage in The Guardian, Museums Journal,
and Islington Tribune.

You can find out more about The Women’s Library on its website, and
Wikipedia page. Its supporters scheme is The Friends of The Women’s
Library.

Please help spread the word about the threat to this key resource for our
subject.

Professor Kerstin Mey (Director of Research and Enterprise, University for the Creative Arts)

The visual arts have a well-established history of engagement with feminism and gender issues. While artists have confronted such issues directly in their work, feminist theorists and philosophers have interrogated the gendering of vision as well as core aesthetic categories such as genius and the art/craft distinction.The ‘feminist’ label, however, can sometimes seem more of a trap than a call for liberatory practices.

This event takes as a starting point the idea that neither all artworks nor all theories informed by a gendered or feminist perspective will necessarily be focussed on what we might think of as ‘questions of gender’ or ‘women’s issues’. Where feminism succeeds is in making it harder to see women as simply determined by their sex or to reduce their work to a question of their gender. Many philosophers and practising artists who see their work as centrally informed by feminist or gendered concerns have moved beyond critique of masculinist traditions and paradigms to re-imagine bodies, identities, matter, space, time, ethics, power and freedom in radically new ways.

Nonetheless, many questions remain:

How do contemporary women practitioners and philosophers think about their relation to feminism, as well as about their own position as women? How do male artists and theorists think about their relation to gender and/or feminist issues?

To what extent are contemporary art practice and theory inflected by a gendered perspective? Where have feminist debates made a difference? What has been the impact of queer theory and other debates around sexuality?

What relevance might recent developments in feminist philosophy and theory have for those working as art practitioners (both women and men)?

To what extent will feminist concerns go on being relevant for the future of art theory and practice? What are the possible futures of feminism?

To what extent do women still perceive themselves as trapped by gendered expectations? In what ways does the work of contemporary women thinkers and artists move beyond, around or outside such expectations to explore other terrains and possibilities of being?

This event will address these questions by creating a space for dialogue between contemporary artists and feminist philosophers and theorists.

We are seeking proposals for short (20 minute) presentations to contribute to this process of dialogue and debate. We welcome papers from:

Artists reflecting on the relation of their own practice to gendered experience as well as to their own sex and/or gender

Artists whose work draws on or is in tension with feminist ideas and theories

Philosophers and theorists working on art and aesthetics from a perspective inflected by gender or feminist theory

Philosophers, theorists, and artists who think of their work as springing from feminist insights, but which is not obviously focussed on ‘gender issues’

Those working on aspects of contemporary feminist philosophy that move beyond critique of the masculine tradition to explore new ways of thinking about such issues as matter, space, time, ethics, identity, bodies, power, science, nature, difference, race, freedom…

Men interested in questions of gender and practice, in both the theoretical and artistic domains.

Please note: we have a small number of bursaries for postgraduates and early career researchers to participate in this event. Please indicate when submitting your abstract if you wish to be considered for such a bursary, and indicate your academic status (e.g. PhD student, early career researcher).

This conference is the second of three events being organised as part of an RSE funded Network in the Arts and Humanities hosted by the Philosophy Programme at the University of Dundee. The Network’s aim is to engender dialogue between feminist philosophers and other key areas of contemporary philosophical debate. The first event focussed on feminist philosophy and philo-sophy of cognitive science; the third will focus on feminist philosophy and philosophy of education.